Creating a Book and e-Book
The FastPencil publishing platform provides writing tools, version tracking, task management and collaboration features, which all work together to help build Print Books + e-Book Bundles with ease.
To Publish a Book and e-Book from one project:
Step 1 – SIGN UP: https://fp.fastpencil.com/users/sign_up Or learn more.
Step 2 – Start a NEW PROJECT: https://fp.fastpencil.com/start Or learn more.
Step 3 – Add CONTENT with the WRITE Button.
Step 4 – Preview your PROOF for FREE with the PREVIEW Button.
Step 5 – PUBLISH! with the PUBLICATION SETUP Button (pricing starts at only $9.99).
Read more to learn all about formatting your book interior. (Hint: FastPencil uses "Themes" to style the interior, but gives authors and publishers flexibility with formatting via writing tool features.)
Formatting with "Themes"
Themes are interior book layout designs that will change the visual design of book's inner contents when rendered using the "Preview Setup" or "Publication Setup" features. Each theme creates a new proof in a different design layout. Layout changes per theme include chapter intros, page headings, table of contents updates, different font families, and with each corresponding style, new line spacing. Be sure to preview your book project in several themes to see which style is best for your publication.
After clicking "Preview Setup", your dashboard will display theme options. Select your desired theme preview, text size, and page dimensions, and click "View Preview" to download a PDF Proof!
Formatting within the Writing Tool
With FastPencil, custom designs for headers and intros can be applied using the FORMATTING function, the second selection from the left on the writing toolbar. Tip: Be sure to consistently apply the formatting to your interior text, and preview your proof often!
The Alignment Feature
To center a block of text, highlight the text you would like to center and from the top of the writing tool, click the ALIGNMENT > Center formatting feature.
The Custom HTML Feature
The writing tool allows for custom HTML to be written directly into the project (for advanced users). Click on the "< >" tool, the first option on the upper left of the writing tool features to browse the code that creates both print and e-books from one project.
About HTML Errors
FastPencil's publishing platform utilizes HTML5 code to create a print and e-book bundle from the same project. Upon Preview Setup or Publication Setup, the project is rendered into a book proof, passing through a round of validation. (For example, does the project have the properties and characteristics needed for potentially hundreds of global distribution channels?)
Although this proof preview process only takes seconds, the complex testing sometimes results in warnings or error messages about your project.
- For example, if your book is missing chapter titles, the publishing system will provide this warning on your project dashboard:
Some projects may pick up erroneous HTML tags within the code (via importing or incorrect custom code writing). This means the project file may display text for epubs and print books differently or incorrectly, once a book file is generated, and the project did not pass the validation check and contains invalid HTML.
- For example, an emphasis tag may not be "closed" in the appropriate place, so the rest of the text is affected by the broken code, such as the whole paragraph is mistakenly italicized instead of just one word. These emphasis tags need to start <em> and stop </em> around the italicized word/s.
To affect the change within the HTML writing tool, search for the open tags and confirm the italicized word/sentence has a closed tag at the end. A manual search for the complete HTML tags is needed to fix and replace the project's code. Click on the "< >" tool, the first option on the upper left of the writing tool features to browse and fix the broken code.
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